Recommended iPhone SDK Books

Many of you have asked for a section for iPhone SDK books that are highly recommended. We've added a page that will have items added over time. Not every book will find its way to the list, as we'll only list those that receive high praise from the community and those that we personally review and recommend. If you'd like to recommend a title for review, please email me at chris@iphonedevsdk.com.

All of the listings do have our Amazon affiliate link embedded, so any purchases of these titles by following our links will support iPhone Dev SDK.

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The book I prefer, which is only available now as a download but should be in book stores in about a month is iPhone SDK Development by Bill Dudney and Chris Adamson. I've tried many of the other books out there, but for me this book is the best. Here is a link for the download if anyone is interested.

I'd like to recommend my own book, Teach Yourself Cocoa Touch in 24 Hours. When I was asked to write it, I agreed because when I learned Cocoa I found most books quite unhelpful. They either assumed prior Mac knowledge or assumed you'd never seen a computer in your life. This is the book I would have liked to have had when I learned Cocoa: it explains how things work, how APIs are architected and why, and introduces you to many tools you might not even have heard about.

If you're interested, I've written a article detailing its contents in more detail.

I found the book iPhone Developer's Cookbook by Erica Sadun to be very helpful!

I totally agree. I also purchased the Beginning iPhone 3...from Apress but I don't like that one as much. Are there other books that teach iPhone programming without Interface Builder? I really find that IB confines what I can do. Once I stopped using it my interfaces all came together the way I had hoped.

I have three books. iPhone SDK 3: Visual QuickStart Guide (Paperback), iPhone Game Development (AppsAmuck), and iPhone SDK 3 Programming: Advanced Mobile Development for Apple iPhone and iPod touch (Wiley) (Paperback). I only like 2 of the 3 books. That is everything else except the book from AppsAmuck. It just doesn't explain much and is stupid how we have to follow along with the source code instead of writing it up. The other books I high recommend because they go step by step and is very easy to understand. The links to those books will be found below.

When I started to write iPhone apps I was amazed by the number of books available and decided to make a site that would have information about every iPhone development book out there. Currently the site has information about over 60 titles and I'm adding links to major reviews, free sample chapters, source code download pages etc.

It would be nice to get some feedback. Do you find this kind of site useful? Any features that you would like to be added?

It is very much a work in progress and my apps keep me busy at the moment, but I do update it as new titles are published. Please note that the Amazon links from the site have an affiliate code. Full disclosure can be found at the about pages.

Just picked up Manning's iPhone in Action, 2nd edition PDF for only $12.49 using MobileOrchard's discount code "moborc2".

It's part of the MEAP (Manning Early Access Program); at this point it's far from complete, but it includes the full 1st edition PDF as well. Print date is expected to be June 2010. You can also get it with the print edition for around $20 total (with discount code) if you like printed books. I still prefer printed books for things like novels, but for tech books I think I switched entirely to PDF a couple years ago.

There are lots of books available in various stores but the point is the person who is learning should be focused on what he wants to get from that book. Either he may a novice programmer or an expert but whatever book you use stay focused on what things you need to grasp from that book.

I say this because many novice programmers try one book, and when they are halfway through the book, they feel its hard to understand then they go for some other book much easier and finally end up withouth even learning the basics.

I liked that one too, but has it been updated? It was written before the SDK was released, and lacks a current information.

Yes, there is a much-larger version out now and it's quite good.

I had my first app just about finished when the first edition of Erica Sadun's book came out, but it would have saved some pain if she had released it sooner! Or for that matter if the SDK hadn't been under NDA for so long (the good old days).

My only gripe with the first edition was the number of items included that could not be used without violating Apple's API conditions. The second edition does not suffer from that.

Unfortunately, things are moving fast, and even her second edition is falling behind the times considerably now.

Due to the high level of praise I express in this post, I need to start off by saying I am NOT affiliated in any way with the authors, editors, or publishers. I'm just extremely impressed and thought some of y'all might want to take a gander at these two books.

I recently found two new books in iBooks. I've read a lot of the books out there and for the most part they are all the same in the sense they give really basic examples and don't show how to implement the different aspects into an actual application someone would develop.

These two are:Professional iPhone and iPad Application Development by Gene Backlin andProfessional iPhone and iPad Database Application Programming by Patrick Alessi

They are both available in from iBooks and are by the WROX's guys. These books do expect you to have some knowledge of OOP. They don't waste 3 chapters and 60 pages by walking you through becoming a developer and downloading XCode. Instead, they take you right to the meat and bones of programming.

So far, a lot of the questions that get asked repeatedly in the forums are covered, i.e. displaying data from one class in another. The examples are in depth and incorporate enough elements into them to give you a great example to use in order to create your own, fully functional application.

If you have no experience, get these two books along with a beginners book. Go through the beginners book first to learn what OOP is, how to navigate XCode, and acquire the fundamentals necessary to understand these two books (they're not overly technical, but they don't explain the basics...they only explain the more 'advanced' techniques].

If you can't tell, I'm a very satisfied reader.

If you decided to take a look, I hope y'all enjoy them as much as I do.

I would highly recommend the book "Programming in Objective-C Third Edition" for anyone looking to learn Objective-C. Assumes no prior knowledge of C, but some programming experience is helpful. Very easy to understand book for beginners such as myself and the author answers any questions you may have about Objective-C on his forum. Love it.